Windows 8... What a horrible thing. How to get your desktop and start menu back.

I just built another new computer to be my main home PC (link to my videos on how to build a PC), and decided to go with Windows 8.  I would have gone with Windows 7, but it is now extremely overpriced as Microsoft forces people to go with Windows 8.  Plus, I had read that even though Windows 8 is a nightmare, there are some 3rd party programs that can make it usable.  For a funny (but true) Windows 8 review, see Brian Boyko's Animated Review.  Rather than duplicate his comments, I will add some of my own observations.

Rather than install these apps that make WIN8 easier to use right off the bat, I thought I might as well try to figure out how to use Windows 8 for a little while first.  I consider myself an all around, jack-of-all-trades computer expert.  I am the guy people call when something goes wrong with their printer, networking, computer, or anything.  I can build and repair PCs, have used just about every computer program and platform at one time or another, and can do some light programming.  I taught myself how to program in Basic and how to use DOS, Lotus 1-2-3, and lots of other programs when I was 10-12 years old.  I have figured out every other computer in 30 minutes or less, and figured I could handle Win8. So, I actually did 15 minutes of reading about the Windows 8 interface to prepare beforehand, installed it, and jumped right in.

At first, it wasn't that bad. I had read people say how hard it was to get to the traditional "desktop", but I figured that out pretty easily.  I will call that main, ugly screen the "Metro Screen", for lack of a better term.   To get to something like the old "Desktop", click the Metro icon for "Desktop" on the left hand side (the block with the flowers in it, above).  But, the longer I have worked with Windows 8 (about a week now), the worse it has gotten.  It turns out that the learning curve is steep and downhill.

As long as I can stay on the desktop, I am fine.  But, since they removed the start button... or rather, even worse, the thing they call "Start" takes you to the Metro screen, it is difficult to run programs.  Oh, sorry Microsoft... "Apps". However, for some reason, Win8 thinks it is cute to open some things in some horrible full-screen mode (I guess this is the wonderful thing they call "Metro"?).  In this full screen mode, there are no menus, no way to minimize or adjust the window size,  and NO way to close it.  None.  Once you open one of these "Apps", it is there to stay, apparently.  For example, if you want to watch a video of your kid, you might click on the Metro Icon called "Video".
This takes you to an extremely stupid screen that says "XBOX Video".  I don't have an XBOX, and don't want one.  Why in the world would you call it "XBOX Video?"

Now, if you are lucky enough to actually find your file of your kid you want to play (these are in the 4  tiny unhelpful light gray rectangles along the left side, I think...).  Once you start playing one of the videos, you can't close it or re-size it. You can only pause, or hit a left-arrow, which seems to be Metro's "take me back to the previous place I was" option.  Hit that, and your video keeps playing, you just can't SEE it! But, the noise just keeps on happening.  Your only option seems to be to figure out how to get back to the still-playing video and pause the video, and leave it paused until the end of time.  Actually closing a program appears to be nearly impossible, without using Task Manager.  And, they broke the task manager interface so badly that it is much more difficult to use, as well.  The only way I have figured out to get out of these stupid full screen programs is to hit the Windows key repeatedly, which takes you to the stupid Metro screen, where you can get back to the desktop.  But, apparently every program you open stays open forever.

Another horrible thing in Windows 8 is the scroll bar.  It is light gray and dark gray, with no lines or shading of any kind.  In fact, no buttons have lines or shading, making them very hard to find.  But it used to be clear which part of the scroll bar you need to click on to drag it, but now it is very confusing.  Look at the scroll bar on the right of the picture below.  Should you try to drag the light gray part, or the dark gray part?

(Answer: The Dark Gray Part)   Additionally, the redesigned icons representing different file types are very hard to figure out... I can't tell a jpg from anything else.

The Metro Screen somehow randomly decides which applications should be accessible there, and which should not.  By randomly trying things I figured out that, you can get a list of all of your applications, if you right click in the metro screen, and click on the tiny "All Apps" thingy that appears.  See the red line I drew below to help you find it.

Click this Icon, and the most horribly-designed menu comes up.  After only one week, my list of all programs covers TWO 1920x1080 monitors.  I have only installed perhaps one third of my programs... errr, Apps yet!  This is going to get much worse very fast. Have a look so far...  What a confusing MESS!

What is even better, there seems to be no way to rearrange this mess, as you could do with the old "Start...All Programs " listing.

As others have written, Microsoft has done an extremely incompetent job of stapling a tablet on top of a computer, and it is determined not to allow you to peel off the tablet to actually use the computer underneath.  A tablet is not designed for doing work, but for playing and watching content.  They have made it almost impossible to DO things and CREATE things.  They also disabled many productivity-enhancing features of windows-past, like the task switcher.  They have created a different task switcher that might be better for phones, but we are not all on our phones all day!

I get the philosophy, I really do.  They are trying to catch up with Google's vision of "Many screens, one platform", so that on your phone, tablet, computer, and ... washing machine... you have the same information and the same experience.  But, for those of us that WORK for a living, we don't want to be stuck typing on a PHONE all day, when we are trying to do database management and data analysis!  All they need to do is have one button that switched back and forth between the dumbed-down phone platform and a real computing platform. Please don't hamper us by attaching a tablet-and-chain to our legs, or people who work for a living will be FORCED to switch to Linux.

How to Get Your Desktop and Start Menu Back
Addendum: After giving up on "Straight Win 8" I downloaded "Classic Shell"- it is a true open source, free program at SourceForge: Download Here.  It does a great job of bringing back the Start Menu. However, until the Metro Desktop can be disabled, Win 8 is still annoying.  I have tried to reset the default programs away from all of the default "Apps".  Another good finding is that when you use multiple monitors, the annoying Metro screen only appears on one of theme, leaving you a regular desktop view on the other.  See picture below with two monitors: While you can have the traditional desktop on both monitors, here I show you what it would look like to have Metro on one, and traditional desktop on the other.  On the right monitor, see the little "Start button at the bottom left, courtesy of "Classic Shell".

However, Metro takes over your Primary Screen... which is more annoying.  But, since you can have your Classic Shell start menu at the bottom of BOTH screens, this is a little helpful.  It just might be possible to integrate the annoying Metro desktop into a useful work life if you have say, three monitors.  Two for work, and one for Metro.  I doubt it... but it might be possible.  However, now after over a month, I have found absolutely no use for any of these Metro Apps. There is no excuse for designing a program with the inability to re-size, minimize, or close it.  If I could destroy and remove it all, I would. Make sure to install alternatives, like VLC media player for music and video files, and a good, free alternative for viewing photos (Picasa is OK). Below, see how "Classic Shell" brings back the traditional Start...Programs menu, helpfully separating the "Apps" from the real programs.  You can fully customize these menus, just as you would expect (from Windows before they went Bats@&% crazy).

One final example of rude stupidity on Microsoft's part is the removal of "Safe Mode" from Win8.  While they didn't totally remove it, they did make it impossible to boot into safe mode without first booting into normal mode.  This shows a complete lack of understanding about the purpose of safe mode!  You boot into safe mode when something goes wrong, say a driver conflict that prevents Windows from booting up.  In previous versions, you would hit F8 while booting, and you could choose to boot into safe mode (which doesn't load most drivers) and fix things.  While in some pre-release verisons of WIN8 you could hit Shift-F8 to boot into safe mode, most people say it has been removed, and I have not been able to get it to work. I have yet to figure out what one is supposed to do when Windows fails to boot.  I guess I will start doing daily images of everything... but this is a huge waste of time.

Where is the Honor is Fake Degrees and Honorifics?

In life, it is necessary to have tough, yet realistic goals.  It is necessary to have winners and losers, and to reward and honor those who achieve greatness.  It is just as necessary to shun those who lie, cheat, and steal to pretend that they have achieved greatness, and pretend to deserve honor.

The dishonorable attempt to buy or lie about honor is of course an old game, but that doesn't make it any more appetizing.  Even more troubling is the attempt by policy makers to water down and cheapen degrees, using the wrong-headed logic that "If a degree helps people earn more money, then we should make it very easy for everyone to have a degree, so everyone will earn more money!"

But, of course this will not work.  A degree is valued and respected BECAUSE it is hard.  And, where degrees are easy to get, they are not valued at all.  There is a movement in the US to open “early college programs”.  From one of the proponent's websites:

Since 2002, the partner organizations of the Early College High School Initiative have started or redesigned 240+ schools serving more than 75,000 students in 28 states and the District of Columbia. The schools are designed so that low-income youth, first-generation college goers, English language learners, students of color, and other young people underrepresented in higher education can simultaneously earn a high school diploma and an Associate’s degree or up to two years of credit toward a Bachelor’s degree—tuition free. www.earlycolleges.org

In short, the program is taking students from groups that often struggle to obtain a high school diploma by age 18, and are often underprepared for a college curriculum, and are awarding them both a high school diploma AND a two year college degree by age 18. 

While it is clear that there is an unacceptable education gap, and that preparing everyone in the world with more rigorous, thoughtful, and demanding education should perhaps be our highest priority… these programs appear to do the opposite. Attempting to “cram” two years of college into the existing high school curriculum of even the brightest students seems to be a destructive exercise.  These students would benefit from MORE years of serious study, not two fewer years and a piece of paper asserting a falsehood.  To attempt to do such “cramming” to the least prepared high school students is  misguided. Because a two year degree by definition is supposed to demonstrate two years of additional preparation after high school, these programs are likely to make two year degrees worthless for all, and put these at-risk students in jeopardy of being unable to complete a 4-year degree at a University. The well-meaning government officials might then decide that these students should be awarded a Masters Degree at age 18.  Instead, I would rather we pay these underprivileged kids to actually spend the extra two years studying to improve their skills-- but more importantly, to teach them to VALUE hard work in education, rather than fakery and credentialization.

Signaling and screening can work to communicate information, but only if one is careful to make sure that the signals and choices represent REAL information. In the end, the reward for a degree is proportionate to either how much valuable learning took place, or how difficult it was to obtain. So, if an online university tells you that they will award you a degree in only a year, or that you can get a Ph.D. by working only a few hours per week for a year or two… you should not expect people to place a large value on something that takes a small effort.  Let me say it clearly: A Ph.D. is the highest degree, designating you as an expert capable of doing cutting-edge research in a field.  This is NOT something that can or should be done on-line, even if the online college charges you a lot of money.  In fact, it sends the opposite signal to savvy employers.  I feel similarly about master's degrees.  I know that this is the 21st century, but Universities are collections of learned people and resources-- much of the learning happens outside the classroom, but within the "learning environment"-- especially at a high level-- you need to have daily face to face interactions with extremely smart people in order to learn complicated information.

In the US, Russia[1], and elsewhere, fake degrees have been around for a long time… so long that it is fairly easy to figure out if a degree is fake (or semi-fake), if an employer wants to.  Now China is having a problem with fake universities—both the American ones and over 100 Chinese ones.  As reported in The Economist, some people have the attitude that “A diploma is worth actual money, whereas an education is not.”[2] Smart businessmen should have the opposite opinion: Reward your employees for skills and productivity, not for pieces of paper.

The Honor of Fake Honorifics?

Recently the Supreme Court of the US ruled that lying about having won a military medal is "Free Speech" .  OK, granted.  People are free to say anything they want-- but they should be shunned for doing so-- treated like garbage.

There are many other, milder forms of self-aggrandizement.  For example...  If you become a lawyer, PLEASE don't put "Esquire" after your name.  It doesn't mean anything.  OK, so it actually does mean something, but it means that you are the servant of a Knight.  Why it is that lawyers in the US think this is cool is beyond me.  If you think it is cool, then please call yourself Esquire BEFORE you get your law degree, too, since having a law degree and being an "Esquire" are totally unrelated!

You might as well call yourself a Colonel as well, just like "Colonel Sanders".  He wasn't a Colonel, but it is a fake honorific used by some old, self-appointed southern gentlemen, just like the fake Esquire honorific. If you want to be really fake, then you can also form a sole proprietorship ( I have, all it takes is to say "I am a sole proprietor!"), then call yourself the Chairman and CEO. And, while you are at it, start calling yourself Reverend!  Yep, there is no requirement except to start using it.  Now, you , John Smith, can introduce yourself as:

     Reverend Colonel John Smith, Esquire, Chairman and CEO of Smith Enterprises, Ltd.  
 
If you are desperate to impress people, then please... GO AND DO SOMETHING HONORABLE!!!  The world needs you to achieve greatness. Words are cheap. When you lie, cheat and steal to fake honor, you cost yourself more than you know.

---

[1]Economics of corruption in doctoral education: The dissertations market, http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v31y2012i1p76-83.html

[2] July 7^th, 2012 Fake Degrees: A Quick Study, The Economist.

How The Grinch Stole Greensboro's TubaChristmas

When I was young, I played the Trumpet, Tuba, and Euphonium (a small tuba, in the same range as a trombone, but with a beautiful sound, and valves, see mine above).  In Junior High and High School I would go to UNC-Greensboro one Saturday in Early December to practice Christmas music with 150 other tuba, euphonium, and baritone (very similar to a euphonium) players.  Then we would all truck over to Four Seasons Town Centre (the Mall) and play a half hour concert for the shoppers.  This event is called TubaChristmas, and is repeated all over the world every year.

Last January, I bought myself a used Euphonium, after not having one for 20 years.  I have been practicing, with my goal to be ready for TubaChristmas this year.  However, there won't be any TubaChristmas in Greensboro in 2012.  The closest one will be in Winston Salem.  I am so sad!

It seems that since the Four Seasons Mall went bankrupt and was sold recently, that the new mall owners (General Growth Properties) were giving the organizers a hard time about trying to have TubaChristmas at the mall.  What a great way to welcome yourselves to the community-- destroy an over 30 year old Christmas tradition??? Dr. Dennis Askew, at UNC-Greensboro, had been organizing this even for many years.

Here are some YouTube clips from Greensboro TubaXmases past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJSSzybiiAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgGn9T7gDE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hNCf1gMK-c

There is an event in Winston-Salem, but the information on this one still seems pretty sketchy to me - according to TubaChristmas.com-

WINSTON-SALEM - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8 - TIME: 6:00 pm
LOCATION: Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum
REGISTRATION: 11:00 am, Winston-Salem State University, K.R. Williams Auditorium
REHEARSAL: 1:00 pm, same
PARKING: University and Colliseum <sic> lots
CONDUCTOR: Brent Harvey
COORDINATORS: Brent M. Harvey 336-750-2526, Bart Collins 336-456-2359

Why the coliseum?  What is going on?  It looks like it is going to be played 1 hour before a basketball game?  Does my family need tickets to the basketball game to watch?  What a sad end to a LOOOONG Greensboro tradition-- I played it in 1983 and 1984 that I am sure of, and a few after that, I think.  I took my 3 year old to see it last year, and told him that Daddy would be there playing next year.

I hope that TubaChristmas can come back to Greensboro next year.  I might have to scavenge up a brass quatrtet, and go sit in a parking lot somewhere to play some Christmas music.  Any takers?

Bah Humbug?